For Joshua Saying goodbye is like pushing for hysteria’s eternity on a cold wall that won’t ever bother budging even a bit and taunts you like the photographs with folded corners and faded tops that have caught fire from staring too hard for too long. And using your legs won’t help— they were supposed to carry you so far in your life and support the others, too; too heavy to move and you'll break before the wall will tiptoe toward maybe a more comfortable place just a few inches away; inches are space to breathe in. A wall, like the past, cannot ever move; time doesn't deign to that, so sad-blue and powerless it dares make us feel with a grip that’ll only scald and not burn because the masochism would be an out and the past does not permit us the treat. Listen, though, because goodbye is a reckoning to about-face and notice, then greet, the rest of the room, waiting as it always has and true—that it's unchanged is so full of sorrow for you, the fullness so hidden to all those unknowing backs. Know that in your greeting you can find a way to cheat time in a manner you'll need to make into a familiar friend who you've been to hell with and back but you are here now, ringing, the bell in conversation. You listen politely to what time has plattered for your counterparts while you knowingly wait your turn to turn ‘round to that wall you know stands behind you with illuminated and illuminating photographs whose dancing corners will cheer you all now, and now you have more eyes than just yours looking straight-on at the wall that only you can see— and that's okay, because we all have walls and one day we’ll all be walls, stationed forever: ‘o guardian— you melt into the frame and you wear his smile on your own face and ours, and you laugh, and so do we.
Fourier Transform of a table
Fourier Transform of a table 1. They are pint-sized and abounding in spirit, the girl and the boy, who now launch themselves in a leap across the room of her parent’s home and into the wooden chairs at the inherited table they’re just this year tall enough to sit at. Their parents know it’s normal for such young bonds to form and to break, certainly with expectation of the latter but they’ll never say that aloud; let childhood love run its course, for run fast and free it does. 2. “Charlie,” her mother inquires, “OJ for you?” He sits a moment and ponders, everyone wonders at the inside of a child’s mind, longing for it without even a semblance of surreptitiousness. “No, not today!” he chirps like a bird, very much so still under wings in the nest. “And for you, Annabel, love?” “I want oranjuse, mommy!”— Annabel, too, a birdsong. Back around they come for lunch, a day of preschool done, the afternoon open as a sky waiting for clouds to float in. “Annabel, sweetheart,” catching her half a bite into a turkey sandwich with mayonnaise she’ll need a napkin for, “What should we play this afternoon?” Charlie answers; Annabel lets him. “Tag.” “You’re it!” Sweat dried then baths taken, they’re back now, dinner served, a pot pie and potatoes, glass of milk for the bones to stay strong. “Let’s watch a movie!” they – somehow – say in unison, a monovice, they speak as one. “Upstairs or downstairs?” “I want to sleep on the couch!” “But we fell asleep there last time!” “So what?” “But you snore!” 3. Far in years and wisened in spirit as they come, the old man and the old woman slowly walk to the table for a simple breakfast of coffee and a newspaper. They’ve seen many things; the paper brings back memories, doesn’t make new ones. “Should we walk or should we drive?” Annabel looks down, noting sunshine that warms the back of her left hand. “Let’s walk.” He nods. “I’ve found over the years that sun helps with funerals.” She nods. For lunch, still a sandwich. For all that’s changed, she still needs a napkin for the mayonnaise. They’re both reflecting; they just watched a friend descend into the box and ascend the stairs. Charlie speaks. “What will you miss most?” “We won’t miss anything; that’s almost the worst part.” “Or the best part.” Dinner is steak. Red, rare, with rosemary. Fragrant. They have memories from that smell. They’re lost there, and don’t mind it. “You know what I’ll miss?” “Hmm?” “I’ll miss going to bed with you.” “Well then I guess we’ll just go to sleep together and then we’ll never miss a thing.” A pause, feeling gravity. “Where do you want to sleep?” A pause, a quick and light leap. “Somewhere over there.” “Where?” “There—,” a nod,“your arms.” 4. The little house straddles a line of longitude, a narrow kitchen the stage for many scenes of a play that still runs every day with the same cast and an audience of two. Generation and generation again the table sits like a canvas, each morning the sun paints a bright rectangle onto its eastern edge, yellow fingertips tracing the wooden swirls they could have drawn in sand when they were kids; and each afternoon the sun warms the slate shingles who don’t like to let it go; and each evening it sets and onto the west the sun drizzles its orange and its pink. The sun comes and it goes, and so does the cast, on and on, weary but in some ways more alive, until finally they sleep. And so the sun sets.
Cynic
Cynic Please gaze out and wear a light smile for those of us who’ve misplaced ours— whisper back to me and narrate what comes through your wrought-iron gates, those eyelashes, you’re still young and no cynics yet roam the castle’s halls— Your eyes are earnest and interested, in some ways unquestioning, the advice against which I question because truthfully for bliss you need ignorance— no awareness, just push your hand forward with enthused force and grab onto those dolloped moments, dripping on by one-by-one, bye, you shouldn’t think to say, don’t regret their passage since passage is sad if you let the cynics in and thankfully you haven’t yet. Show me, then, please, with your young eyes, I want to see that light again— just that it is, not what.
Birthday wish
Birthday wish I waltzed in a haze through a birthday today more in reflection than celebration since life’s nearing inflection, adding force in some direction, not yet clear to see whereupon the next year will fall. And fall is apt in its leaves that melt colors like exotic orange flavors, red for passion (oh, I certainly hope passion) and light pink for the flickering affection I think we all generally think of when a friend or maybe not pulls out their spell book and spellbound in expectation wishes us a magical year.
Yet time steamrolls forward
Yet time steamrolls forward Yet time steamrolls forward and really doesn’t care in the slightest how I like that. It seems futile to pass by every “now” agonizing for a future in which I could just as well pass by agonizing for another future because time steamrolls forward and really doesn’t care in the slightest how I like that. It seems the only point in time at which I have certain control and no uncertainty over my emotion is the present. Oh, what a gift, ha ha, is that the joke? Yet though time steamrolls forward and really doesn’t care in the slightest how I like that, I think I’m averse to the present like the demons from my past. I think, indeed, that’s the joke.